


The Street Lamp and the Morning

by Pie (potteresque_ire)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anthropomorphic, Draco Malfoy as a Street Lamp, Experimental Style, Harry Potter as Breaking Dawn, M/M, hd_remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-22
Updated: 2010-04-22
Packaged: 2019-03-10 18:56:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13507728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potteresque_ire/pseuds/Pie
Summary: A simple love story between a street lamp that stands forgotten in an alley, and first sliver of light that passes by it at the start of every morning.





	The Street Lamp and the Morning

 

 

 

1.

  
You see that street lamp over there, blinking its flames away into the night? It’s like the others in this rundown neighbourhood, of course, its cast iron post cobwebbed and its dark green paint chipped and flaking. But the tale I'm going to share is all about this street lamp, so it deserves a name.  
  
Say, Draco.  
  
_Strange_ , you say? Maybe. But one may say the same about its—his—story too.  
  
Draco is bit of a recluse—not like the army of lights marching along the highways, golden lights spreading under their wings as the glamour of the city zooms past them. He’s the lone survivor in this alleyway after that horrid night a year ago, when gunfire erupted between a gang and the police and an explosion followed. What has remained is lifeless and darker than the night. Hardly anyone passes by anymore, not even the most brazen of youngsters who boast about their conquests of drugs and women. Night travelers have claimed to hear the wails of ghosts and smell the blood thought to have soaked into the charred walls.  
  
It’s not a bad thing, being forgotten. Draco has suffered fewer dents, less tattoos of obscenities on his frame since then.  
  
And he has managed to find a friend in the most unlikely of places, at the most improbable time of the day.  
  
Morning. Not Mid Morning though, he who beams at the neighborhood coming alive and people dashing from their homes to school and work. Not even Early Morning, reigning the skies with her scarlet as the scent of fresh rolls drifts from bakeries and the faint calls of newspaper deliveries echo in the streets. Rather, it is the most elusive Morning that everyone knows but seldom sees—the one who brings about the first sliver of light, that sliver that, once upon the time, sliced through the fire that was Draco at the end of every night and deemed him obsolete.  
  
I shall give this Morning a name too. Something simple, something you and I can imagine greeting everyday like its namesake. How about… Harry?  
  
Harry it is then.  
  
  
  
2.  
  
Harry and Draco were meant to be enemies, or at best, contentious acquaintances who brushed by one another for the brief intermission between the night and the day. But Fate was a curious creature, a fine actor capable of taking many forms. When he swept by a fortnight ago, he had opted to play a careless electrician. That day, on which he was supposed to perform his bi-annual maintenance work on Draco and set the fuel pump's timer to a new season, he walked by the alley with his eyes closed, a thick wool scarf still wound around his neck and inhaling, no doubt trying to catch a whiff of the warmer season yet to come.  
  
Draco’s heart therefore remained on his winter schedule. It meant he was awake for long hours, long enough to witness how the Morning would emerge at the horizon. The sliver of light that was Breaking Dawn—Harry—came to him earlier by the day, a luminous dash that no smudges or nicks on the street lamp’s weathered glass could diminish. Sharp and brilliant as the light was, the way it fell on Draco was gentle; shy, too, reflecting off Draco whose faces had remained cold from the night. Persistence had soon proved to be Harry's strength; his light bounced against Draco over and over again, knocking its greeting on the glass, finding its way through the translucent walls.  
  
Spring came with its sweet fragrance of budding blossoms. Harry’s light became warmer and more surely, wrapping itself around Draco, embracing the flames that were Draco’s soul.  
  
Was it love? Draco almost wanted to believe it—especially the moment when Harry penetrated the glass, when his fire, his passion touched and burned with Draco’s own.  
  
  
  
3.  
  
Street lamps have played a perfect backdrop for numerous romances. Perhaps there will come a time when one of them will play the lead, the tall if gangly prince in its own fairy tale. But time, while signifies little to a forsaken street lamp, defines the Evenings, Afternoons, Mornings—  
  
—and the Dawn, with all that follow in his wake: the glory of the sun, the lustrous hair of a beautiful maiden that crown it like a fiery halo, …  
  
They, the rising sun and Early Morning, hasten their race across the skies with the passing of the season, crashing against the Dawn before them like the mounting waves of summer heat. In their pursue, Harry’s steps labor in the humid air, the once clean lines of his rays contorted by condensates as he clings on Draco to rest.  
  
The breeze has turned heavy as well, abandoned by the gales of winter and the flighty song birds of spring. For once, this wind is within Draco’s reach and it carries a whisper from the Morning.  
  
_If you can be my anchor; if your lamppost can stretch all the way into the sky and pin me in the space above you._  
  
The flame in Draco flickers, a sigh he can only mimic in the still air. "I’m not going anywhere, Harry. Come back tomorrow as you did today. Do it again the day after. I'll be here forever, I promise—"  
  
_I don't care about promises or forevers._  
  
These words still dissipating in the wind, the rays of Harry's light ride the gathered mist on Draco's glass, which, like a single tear, rolls and falls on Draco’s body, on the door behind which his timer is kept. His meaning is clear. Draco may have a change of heart any day, a change he and Draco don't have any say on. The street lamp may still be in the alley tomorrow, but with his fire, his soul, already dormant once more—maybe Fate with his utility tools will drop by in an hour, crank the knob too hard and break the circuit. Maybe he will decide that Draco’s glory days are long gone and call someone to tear it down.  
  
No matter how deep, how long his post has been planted into the ground, Draco, like his ancestors can be uprooted and perish in mere hours.  
  
Not like Harry, conqueror of the Night, who will triumph and live over and over again.  
  
_I'm a light finding my way in the dark alone. So are you._  Harry’s voice, soft as his luminescence, echoes like memories. A fleeting dream.  _The sky is yours too if you wish._  
  
But how? Draco wants to scream. He is a glass cage on a post, for the love of God. He may appear prideful, looking down to the grime and dirt around him, but the heavens seem close to him only because Harry has stooped so low from his place.  
  
_Light has no boundaries, Draco. And I—_  The blush in Harry's light, for once, has little to do with the Morning maiden hot on his heels.  _I want you be a part of me. Inside me. Look around you._  The rays of his light spread their arms into the distance.  _The sky seems so high but still, it ends at the horizon, the very ground you're standing on. Your place is just so faraway from my home._  
  
And so poor, like Draco's soul—a small flame visible only to the night, to the intruder of the town who passes by once every blue moon, sheathed in a trench coat with loot in his arms and treacherous plans in his belly. What makes Harry think that Draco will find acceptance among the clouds and the wind he intends to share?  
  
Harry smiles; the alley brightens with his glow.  _They go wild when Lightning visits. He's a twin of mine, Lightning, sharp light and all. He reminds me of you when he strikes as the lone fire at night, but he hasn't withstood the test of time._  
  
The sun is rising, its light that is once so harmonious with Harry's intensifies. The peace of the hour heaves and fractures as its power radiates through the sky. It is time for Harry to go.  _Even an ember can turn into a blaze, Draco. Burn and let your flames leap._  
  
The Dawn's lingering light tastes the sweet dewdrops on Draco’s glass housing.  _Your soul has always been sheltered by a glass house. Nature protects in its own ways—you'll be cared for. Break away._  
  
  
  
4.  
  
So Draco begins his quest. He spends the day reaching for the skies, centimeter by centimeter. Nobody notices of course, not that or the green moat around him, chipped pieces of paint that shed as he tries to grow. He stokes his flames to their brightest, anointing his wick with more oil, overworking the electric pump that sends the fuel upward to his soul.  
  
As he watches on, Harry wraps his train of radiance around the street lamp. But the glass between them is losing its translucence, as the dust and dirt from the years past chars and blackens in Draco's heat. Draco’s fire is also overtaking Harry’s gentle light against the glass, its claws reaching out and scorching into the Dawn, turning the mist in its fringe into vapors.  
  
Harry never complains.  _I used to extinguish you with my blade of light,_  he says, as a hiss emits from the steam or from Harry himself. He covers it up with a chuckle.  _Maybe that’s how I can stay here._  His sliver of light focuses, a momentary floodlight on a black smudge on Draco’s glass.  _Then there're no skies to think about—no nights to fight, no reining in the Morning's glory. I'll just be stuck on you..._  
  
The last tendrils of smoke begin to clear between them. For a moment they rise, but are soon lost in the incoming scarlet that is Early Morning. Harry frees Draco from his embrace as he retreats, his last words trailing off in his wake.  
  
_... Like this burnt moth, who sees something it shouldn’t have seen. Shouldn’t have loved._  
  
  
  
5.  
  
The rest of that day Draco spends with his flame dampened to barely a twinkle. As much as he used to hate the Mornings, he cannot steal from the world the bearer of its light. The glass that fences off his soul, he knows, will never melt away. It will always stand between him and the Dawn, a wall that Draco will never surmount.  
  
_Break away_ —if only.  
  
Love conquers death, people say, but certain things… even love is not enough.  
  
He remembers how that moth inched close to his fire several evenings before, its black wings fluttering madly between the safety among cool shadows, the ghosts wandering along the alley and the glimmer of light that was Draco. Somehow, Draco was certain that it knew of its fate if it succumbed to his temptation.  
  
But the moth's love for light and heat was as deep as it was innate. It had no choice but to surrender.  
  
Draco’s solace is rolling in from the horizon—an early summer storm, its strengthening winds carrying the scent of salt from the ocean afar and his only friends who must escape the tumultuous waters below them.  
  
They were creatures of the sea, his friends, but their memories of home were tainted by nightmares of gales and pounding rain…  
  
The seagulls land in a flock and perch on Draco’s shoulder, on the ornate, intricate cast iron arch, a sad memory of the neighbourhood’s affluent past. Each one of these birds, Draco was told, was a seaman in its last life, a life lost in the very waters they had used to walk upon. Much like the one street lamp in a deserted alley, a sailor is a lonely profession, he who must learn to find camaraderie in the most unlikely of places. The climates have turned out to be his best friends; he is close with the sun in the day and the stars at night, who guide him to his destinations; the rain and wind and clouds he talks to as well, for they bring tidings of what may come in the skies.  
  
The sailor only abhors the storms that bury lives in the sea—not for their temper and idiosyncrasies, but for their betrayal of a friendship old as civilization.  
  
Why the birds choose Draco, Draco has never asked. Maybe it is because he is among the few who understands them on land. They all navigate their life in solitude, having only the vast nature, often darkness, as their companion.  
  
With their soft cries, the seagulls share with Draco the news they have heard in their travels. Months have gone by since their last visit. The black slick from the sunken ship has yet to dissipate, red tides have tainted the white beaches along the western coast. Their beady eyes flicker at the dim fire inside Draco every now and then, but they hold off their questions until when dusk arrives and the imminent nightfall fails to lighten their friend.  
  
So, in the faint haze that is all that remains inside him, Draco tells them about Harry, about the Breaking Dawn who wishes to share the world with a street lamp. The weak flickers from his light are but ghosts against the birds' plumage, less like flames but limp locks of blond hair about to be blown into oblivion.  
  
How much can the seagulls hear and understand with the thunderstorm raging over them? But they stroke him with their wings, brush his glass housing clean with their feathers and use their beaks to tidy up his wounds where paint has fallen away from the post.  
  
Then, without saying a word, they take off again.  
  
  
  
6.  
  
Towards the end of that night, the torrential rain has toned down into a drizzle. The wind is still strong and Draco sways on his post, not caring, wishing, almost, for the rain to sip through the crack in his casing.  
  
It is a relief when it happens, when a cold tear slithers down the interior of Draco’s once impenetrable shell. Just months ago he would have panicked. Leaks rarely show up alone and so the first one is a omen, the start of a countdown to the day when the lamp must go out of commission.  
  
Draco welcomes this bead of rain simply because, as he has expected, even with the minute amount of heat he is emitting, the water warms and clouds over on the glass. If there are to be walls between him and Harry, he might just well make them solid enough that not even the radiance that ends the nights can penetrate them.  
  
Light is too often mistaken as hope, and hope….  
  
Draco should be grateful. He is the one soul that has survived this alley of death. And the hate he once harbored, the spite for all that dared to outshine him and bound his destiny to the night, has dissipated through his knowing Harry like morning dew under the sun.  
  
  
  
7.  
  
For days, the fog keeps Harry away from Draco's view inside the glass. The street lamp is still aware when the Dawn approaches him, when a diffused stream of gold paints itself on the other side of the fog. Despite his best effort to quell them, Draco’s flames rouse at the distant promise from the east and fire off sparks that are too bright, too free.  
  
At first, Harry seems content without Draco; he comes, he waits, he departs. His duties propel him to move on, perhaps, the golden sun offering an extra push with its ascent while the maiden of Early Morning wrap its long, red tresses around her Dawn, making sure he goes wherever she does.  
  
Harry will soon forget about them, or so Draco prays.  
  
Or so Draco fears.  
  
He refuses to notice the summer’s heat that Harry begins to carry with him, that he smears on Draco’s glass as if trying to boil away the fog between them from the other side. Draco refuses to smile when Harry works himself to a sweat that saturates the air, refuses to trim his flames to delicate pointiness when that scheme of Harry bears its fruits, refuses to let his flames swerve in the memory of their passionate dance with Harry’s fire.  
  
Draco refuses to hope.  
  
For love. For breaking away—freeing himself...from himself.  
  
With June comes the monsoon, with monsoon comes rain that sips into Draco like that first raindrop, inching nearer and nearer to the wick that fuels his soul. His end cannot be far away; he knows and no doubt, Harry does as well—Harry, who pierces through the night to find Draco as early as he possibly can; whose light is blunted and chilled by the pounding rain, able to do little from outside the water-streaked glass housing.  
  
Day after day, the rain falls. Day after day, Draco expects a visit of his seagull friends, which he seems to hear all the time in the distance but never see.  
  
Draco would like to say goodbye.  
  
  
  
8.  
  
When visitors come, they show up in the form of men with cameras on their shoulders. Hours have gone by since Harry departed for the day, exhausted and brokenhearted as usual.  
  
"It has been raining continuously in this alley for more than a week, according to a worker in the neighbourhood!" screams one of these reporters into his microphone. "While the rest of us have been enjoying perfect summer weather!"  
  
Then, from behind him, Fate—no, the worker in question, the electrician donned in his stained overall and carrying his rusty little toolbox—emerges. "I’ve been wanting to check that lamp," he shouts, pointing at Draco, "and I can’t! It’s pouring here! All the time!" His voice is gruff and his face sunburnt. "Finally I called the police, not that they’d know what to do…"  
  
In the background, Draco can hear those faint noises again—they are louder this time, the calls of seagulls that sound almost gleeful this time, like laughter.  
  
Draco tilts his body and finally sees them, flying in a circle under a lone grey cloud, the tips of their wings touching one another like joined hands. He rocks on his post, trying to get his friends’ attention, trying to get them to land on him so he can bid farewell and ask questions. But they turn and soon vanish into the horizon.  
  
  
  
9.  
  
The story must take a break here, my friends, for the day after the news broke out a small team of maintenance crew, dressed in fluorescent yellow raincoats and muttering curses about the very stupid—and very localized—rain, marches into the alley and begins to restore The Street Lamp Everyone is Talking About. They change the glass housing to a smaller one that embraces the flame at the centre, making sure that the now oversized arch attaching it to the post can shelter it from the rain. They smooth the dents and scratches, repaint the surface from head to toe—first with the green anti-rust paint, then an antique pewter shade that is fitting to the street lamp's years of servitude. Finally, they wash the charred and graffittied walls in the alley and patch up the bullet holes mere meters away from the lamppost.  
  
July flies by and so does August. Dawn drops by when all is quiet and the rain is fragrant with the scent of grass. He lingers, relieved that the worst of his summer hassle is over and he can stay just a little longer every day. He glows and stretches and bends, putting in his best effort to peek through the canvas that has been draped over the street lamp. It helps too that the gray cloud, who the seagulls have talked into the task of perpetual raining, is always there with him, right above the alley where her tears deter the advance of the sun and the far too eager Early Morning.  
  
One thing remains old and unchanged, however. The maintenance crew have tried to open the door to the street lamp's heart—the on-off timer to the oil pump, that is—but the lock is so rusted that nobody, not even the electrician with his little toolbox, is able to pry it open. On the last day of their contract and in a rush to complete the finishing touches, they give up and decide to let the heart be the way it has been. Against the soft luminance that ends the night, the electrician rewires the frayed cords, circumventing the timer. The flames in the glass housing will burn at all times, in all seasons.  
  
The Dawn sees everything, of course, and his dash of light curves into what can only be described as a grin.  
  
The street lamp has shown his heart … by not showing it at all.  
  
  
  
10.  
  
A public event is scheduled for the unveiling of the new Draco, a celebration of his re-admittance into servitude. Just a gathering of the locals, really, so they will have a chance to gossip, to debate whether the street lamp's ability to command the weather is a blessing or a curse, a divine intervention or an oversight by aliens ready to take over the planet.  
  
But Draco has his own ideas. After his soul has awakened, he has chatted with his avian friends, who managed to sneak in from beneath the hem of the giant canvas still covering him. They confess their little dream of finding him a companion from the nature—a soul mate whose presence is as constant as the passage of time, whom Draco can trust as a sailor believes in the sun and the stars.  
  
The rain pours down heavily just before dawn. The Wind has been invited to this party as well and it blows and blows, sending the canvas on Draco to a wild flutter. At times, the damp fabric gets caught over the hooks and corners on Draco’s frame. The seagulls would fly there and free it with their beaks.  
  
A massive heap of beige soon fell against Draco’s post. The wind and rain calms down just in time for the first hint of light to show itself at the horizon. Harry emerges from a distance, further than forever, and he approaches Draco more shyly, more tentatively than one can ever imagine possible.  
  
When the fringe of Harry’s brilliance first touches the street lamp, Draco’s flames emit sparks so bright and jump so high that they form a miniature firework. That is when Harry taps his light against the new glass housing and before Draco can answer, showers it upon Draco’s soul.  
  
From the edge of his vision, Draco can see the seagulls soar into the sky, dragging Wind behind them with the currents under their wings. The Gray Cloud, meanwhile, morphs into a halo, heavy at the rim but light at the center. The downpour along the edge cascades like a waterfall, a curtain guarding the space and time where Harry and Draco live at the center, where the rain is light as mist, just enough to freshen the air from their heat, its drifting strands of silk just dense enough to scatter and spread their glow between and all over them, making them whole—melding day and night, heaven and earth into one.  
  
_Now I have you inside me and me inside you,_  Harry whispers with the delicate breeze, basking in the soft glow that is mostly Draco’s at the moment, although his is strengthening by the minute.  _No steam or fried insects yet._  
  
"You could have said ‘without pain’," Draco counters, as he releases the tethers he has used to subdue his flames.  _Break away_. The fire spread its wings in the glass housing, its flames lively but not wild—they soon settle in their newfound freedom, cuddling against Harry’s incoming rays of light.  
  
They will be there, Draco imagines, for years and years to come. There are no more on-off switches to his heart, no more commands dictating his soul to wake or sleep, no more timers setting expiration dates on his love and his hopes. His fire will burn for as long as he wills it to burn, and small and humble as it is, it will couple with Harry’s in a dance unexpected and yet flawless, just like nature.  
  
  
  
11.  
  
So this is the tale that I’ve heard and wished to tell, about Draco and Harry. I know what you may be thinking—that this is all a figment of my imagination, that this is no romance. True, there are no vows made to be kept for a lifetime, no heart-to-heart confessions, no kisses, no making love on a bed of roses. There's only rain and wind and clouds, a few birds, even a fried moth.  
  
But who can speak on behalf of forever? Who can demand or claim they have found a recipe of love, in which this and that come to pass and therefore must lead to a happily ever after?  
  
Maybe I believe in far too many things; maybe I lack the compass that points to the truth amidst the sea of lies. But I also believe that Fate, donned its overalls and carrying its rusty little toolbox, is capable of wiring the most impractical, inconceivable,  _impossible_  tales into our lives, even if it is a story that must draw together the night and the day.  
  
Even if it is a story about a street lamp and the Morning falling in love.  
  
  
  
_~ Finis_


End file.
